Berlusconi, strong government and the Italian state

Donovan, Mark Philip 2003. Berlusconi, strong government and the Italian state. Journal of Modern Italian Studies 8 (2) , pp. 231-248. 10.1080/1354571032000078257

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Abstract

Over the past decade, state capacity has increased at all levels, including that of central government, and the emergence of effective government in Italy has proved popular. A second trend has been the reassertion of party government since 1996. Given these two trends, the large parliamentary majority obtained by Silvio Berlusconi's alliance, the Casa delle Liberta, might be expected to result in strong party government. In fact, Berlusconi's triumph offers something more and something less than party government, challenging Italian democracy. Nevertheless, as a consolidated democracy, Italy should be able to withstand such a challenge. One stable, democratic outcome to Italy's political transformation would be the consolidation of a Schumpeterian model of democracy. This would require the anomalies of the right's accumulation of powers to be resolved, a process which the left could promote by accepting that strong democratic government is a public good, and by organizing itself to challenge Berlusconi by campaigning to provide Italy with such government through parliamentary competition.

Item Type:	Article
Date Type:	Publication
Status:	Published
Schools:	Department of Politics and International Relations (POLIR)
Subjects:	J Political Science > JA Political science (General)
Uncontrolled Keywords:	Berlusconi, Strong Government, Parties, Transformation, State, Democracy
Publisher:	Routledge
ISSN:	1354-571X
Last Modified:	01 Feb 2017 02:44
URI:	https://orca.cardiff.ac.uk/id/eprint/3494

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